‘These are kids that have been failed by every single system,’ says a Bend Republican who supports the $2.5 million plan
One dollar and 14 cents.
That’s the number Rep. Cheri Helt (R-Bend) wanted people to remember at the close of the initial hearing on House Bill 4039 for homeless youths.
“That’s how much our state funds each of our homeless unaccompanied youth, per day,” she said during Monday’s hearing before the Human Services and Housing Committee. “$1.14 a day, per child, that has no home, no family and no resources. So I’m not shocked to hear you say we need more state investment in homeless unaccompanied youth.”
The committee heard support for the funding bill from numerous youth advocacy groups, along with representatives from statewide housing, women’s rights and schools organizations.
HB 4039 proposes a $2.5 million infusion to serve a population essentially detached from any structured programs. Unaccompanied homeless youths are one portion of the overall homeless youth population, which includes nearly 23,000 homeless students throughout the state. The money would be one-time funding drawn from the state’s general fund.
“These are kids that have been failed by every single system,” Helt told Street Roots. “They’ve been failed at home, failed at school, failed most likely by the foster care system, and probably multiple other systems as well. And they sort of hide, so they’re not very trusting of us as a system to help them, and we’re proving them right by only investing $1.14 a day.”
Helt said she came to that figure by dividing the state’s conservative estimate of 3,700 unaccompanied homeless youths by the $3.1 million the state provides Department of Human Services each biennium for this population. The estimate range for unaccompanied youths in Oregon is between 3,700 and 4,200.
HB 4039 dedicates $1 million of the funding to expand capacity in DHS’s Runaway and Homeless Youth Program and provide access to emergency shelter, transitional housing, outreach and mental health care. It would also give $1.2 million to the Host Home program, which gives youths a safe home to live in while they complete high school. The remaining funding would go toward a comprehensive assessment of the state’s current youth systems.
“This is a really important bill because we’re providing services that do not currently exist for a large number of kids in Oregon,” said Doug Riggs, a lobbyist with the Oregon Alliance of Children, Families and Communities, which is calling for a total $4 million spending package for homeless youths.
“If you’re a youth who is homeless on the streets for just three months during your adolescence, you’re 60 to 68% more likely to be homeless as an adult,” Riggs said. “So if we really want to get at the adult homelessness that our communities are facing, we’ve got to interrupt the supply that is providing homeless adults to our street. We’ve got to start with the kids, and this package does exactly that.”
Riggs said the funding would serve more than 700 unaccompanied youths, or about one-sixth of the unserved youth population.
Richard Donovan with the Oregon School Boards Association said the money would go toward youths dealing with harshest intersections of poverty and homelessness. The association represents nearly 200 school districts, 19 Education Service Districts and 17 community colleges.
“The programs that this money would support would be targeted specifically for students in high school and students that are very close to being able to take the next steps on their own,” Donovan said. “We support them all day long in school the best we can, but when the school day ends, there is nowhere for them to go.”
A Family For Every Child operates a Host Home program for homeless students in the Eugene and Springfield school districts. In the 2018-19 school year, those districts identified more than 1,200 students experiencing homelessness; among them, nearly 400 were unaccompanied homeless youths. These youths are more likely to drop out of school to take jobs to earn money for shelter, food and other basic needs. They are also more likely to move from school to school. Statewide, the high school graduation rate for homeless students was just 55% in 2019, according to the Department of Education.
Helt had pushed for similar additional funding as an amendment in the 2019 legislative session, but the bill it was attached to failed. This year she partnered with Rep. Alyssa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland, to bring the concept forward as a committee bill.
While she supports this bill, Helt calls it merely a tourniquet to the crisis of youth homelessness. She compared Oregon’s figures to Washington state, which she said is spending $33 million on unaccompanied homeless youths.
“I think this is the biggest return on investment that we can spend,” Helt told Street Roots. “These children did not end up homeless by their own doing. We have to help them lift themselves up and get on their feet and get out of homelessness and keep them out of homelessness.”
Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org; follow her on Twitter @jozuhl
The Next Generation is a Street Roots series that focuses on the well-being and housing stability of children and young adults, locally and nationally, and explores the work being done to prevent another generation from becoming homeless. Street Roots received funding from Meyer Memorial Trust's Housing Advocacy Portfolio to develop dedicated reporting for The Next Generation series.
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